Who Will Save Susan Boyle?

Has Britain’s Got Talent created a monster with Susan Boyle? It appears the “sweet Scottish lady” who won millions of fans has yanked off her mask and revealed the rage and terror beneath. Two days have passed, and Boyle has been involved in two separate “foul-mouthed rants” in public. In one of those incidents, police had to intervene. Was this woman ready for the scrutiny she’d face as a breakout sensation? Britain’s Got Talent judge Piers Morgan said on his blog that Boyle “has been in tears many times during the last few days, and even, fleetingly, felt like quitting the show altogether at one point and fleeing all the attention.” Gawker jokes that Boyle has already undergone the five stages of fame. Odd, considering she’s been in the public eye less than two months. At this rate, she’ll end up like Paula Yates by July.

Simon Cowell‘s ex, model Terri Seymour, has won a restraining order against a woman who attacked her outside the American Idol finale. The assailant allegedly “attacked (Seymour) from behind, putting her into a headlock, wrenching her neck, and choking her with the full force of her 200 lb. frame.” The woman’s excuse? She did it “in retaliation for Cowell playfully choking fellow Idol judge Paula Abdul on the show.”(The Independent)

Who knew Oxford was so scandalous? The show simply wanted to appoint a new Professor of Poetry, but the competition for the position became a sordid saga of sex and backstabbing. As The SunThe Economist reports, “Anonymous letters went to a hundred Oxford movers-and-shakers, detailing claims of sexual harassment made in 1982 against Derek Walcott, a West Indian poet fancied to win. He dropped out, leaving Arvind Mehrotra, of Allahabad University, and Ruth Padel, a great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, in the race. Both condemned the smear campaign. On May 16th Ms. Padel became the first woman to win the job…Eight days later it emerged that Ms. Padel had in fact helped to spread the story of the sex scandal by e-mailing journalists with recommended reading on it.”

While in an LA club, Gerard Butler “had one girl on his knee, one whispering in his ear and another dirty dancing for him. All that was missing was someone feeding him grapes.”(The Sun)

The perils of being a Naked Chef: “The saintly Jamie Oliver, the original Naked Chef, reveals in the latest issue of his self-branded magazine that one Valentine’s Day he roasted sea bass for his dearly beloved Jules while naked, and [he] almost cooked his genitalia too when a belch of steam escaped the newly opened oven.” That’s hot. (Guardian)

Kevin Wicks

Kevin Wicks founded BBCAmerica.com's Anglophenia blog back in 2005 and has been translating British culture for an American audience ever since. While not British himself—he was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri—he once received inordinate hospitality in London for sharing the name of a dead but beloved EastEnders character. His Anglophilia stems from a high school love of Morrissey, whom he calls his "gateway drug" into British culture.